Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Three Studio Classes

There are 3 of them. And we make art.

A lot of this art is awesome.


Due this past Monday was a sculpture, for my Sculpture I class.
It is of a lady:

Very first project in our very first sculpture class: sculpt from a live model. But it came out pretty well. Though, in order to keep our grades, we have to fire them. Which is terrifying.


In Typography, things are going a little better than before. However, I did just find out that our portfolio for getting into the Graphic Design concentration contains 3 drawings and a bunch of class projects. So now I'm feeling the pressure to make sure that everything I make for class from now on not only gets me a B average, but also let's me continue taking Graphic Design classes.

Anyway, project 2 is a typography booklet, and this is mine:

I think it's nice, but we'll see what the prof thinks!


Metalsmithing, on the other hand, is going all sorts of well. Partly because of the badassery, Partly because I'm slightly better at it than at only using type as graphics and not being allowed any color.

Our first project was a bracelet, with 4 flattened sides to look like this:

It's shaped up slightly since this was picture was taken, though it still doesn't fit. But who wants the bracelet that you've slaved over for weeks to fit?



Picture dump!

Here's a test piece we did before we started on the bracelet. That line is where I recently cut it to use the non-hammered end in my current project, rather than buying more from the rod that everyone else was hogging anyway.

This is where the soldering and annealing happens. We visit this spot much more often than we like, since work hardening apparently sneaks up on you very quickly, and solder seams break all. the. time.

The pickle! I avoid the pickle now because it takes forever (3-5 minutes geez...), and I'm starting to like the color that annealing brings out.

THE ANVIL

How the anvil makes us feel:



On to Project 2.
Project 2 makes me very happy.

The objective of Project 2 is to make a bracelet. Only this bracelet is far more sculptural and fine art-like. Actually, the last bracelet was more of the practice bracelet, so this may actually be Project 1.

Anyway.
PROJECT-SCULPTURAL-BRACELET IS GOING TO BE AN AXE.

I have sketches!

Well, I have more sketches and how it developed and things, but they're in my locker. I actually knocked these out right now just for you.

So basically, it's an axe. I knew from the start that I wanted to do a bracelet that looks like it's dangerous to wear. There's a piece in my lampworking book that talks about having delicate pieces of glass laying against your skin, and I liked the idea of something that could be dangerous--but as a piece of jewelry, it really isn't.

At first I had the idea of doing a granddaddy long legs. Just sort of a large, delicate spider, clinging to your wrist, but this is a project on forging, and I'd probably just need some wire and some sheet to do that.

In my research, I typed "forged" into Etsy and got a lot of knives and things, and realized OH MY GOSH FORGING WEAPONS.

So, I played some Rift, got a few designs of weapons that my character can make, and then bent the handle around. I also liked the idea of ball head rivets as design elements, and figured I could throw some of those in wherever more support is needed. (I recognize that I have no idea how this will end up sitting on the wrist. It may very well fall over somehow. I don't know.)


So I am super excited about that. We do have to start working on a relief sculpture of a hand or foot study for Sculpture, so I have to work on that tomorrow... But when I get more hammering in (because I am Hephaestus) I will post progress pictures!




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